More on the Bad Penny Story

The wankstorm hasn't really hit yet on the Cassandra Claire thing. The main emotion over at bad_penny is disgust. As of now most of it has been posted and honestly I am pretty disgusted by the sheer amount of theft she committed in writing that damned trilogy. Yes, theft. I saw pieces of one of my favorite series used in the trilogy and just saw red reading the side by side thing. She admits to using one thing from it, but there is much more than what she admitted. Folks this hits me hard here because in college I saw someone booted from school for the same thing. I spoke with a friend of mine who is a journalist and asked what the hell they teach in journalism classes that someone who claimed it as a profession would think this is cool(CC was a pro journalist at the time or so she said). The friend said nothing would be taught for someone to think this is acceptable. I have to wonder what CC thought as she amassed a huge fan following in fandom who squeed over all that stolen work. You see if it had been me? I would've been squirming massively at the idea that people thought someone else's stuff was mine. It would've eaten away at me and bothered my conscience something fierce. I am not a fanfiction writer, the one effort I made in that arena remains unfinished and to me is pretty bad, but it's out there on ff.net and it's mine. I got good reviews there and I was puffed up with glee when I read them. I cannot imagine feeling that way if I'd snagged someone else's words and tried to pass them off as mine.

So how is it CC did not think that she was doing anything wrong here? How did it escape her attention that what she was doing is theft? I really wonder. I know when all of this got hashed and rehashed, Heidi was her pitbull defender with long assed screeds about copyright law and such and the argument that fanfiction is copyright violation and such. Well yes and no. Fanfiction is allowed at the discretion of the world builder, in HP that's JK Rowling. Rowling allows it, so we have a nice playground to visit. But CC took stuff from writers who DO NOT allow it. And stuff from writers who had no clue they were being used in a fanfiction nominally set in the HPverse. I find myself wondering if there was ANYTHING ORIGINAL in her trilogy after seeing what I've seen and the OP over there saying she did not check the whole damned thing out. It's a long trilogy, and with all the stuff taken it would take more than one person to check it out. At this point I pretty much don't think she can write an original work, and will not purchase her books when they are published. You see the rub for some people is her theft HAS been rewarded. She got an iPod, a new laptop and a book contract. The first two were from the people who fangurled her trilogy, the last from Simon & Schuster who should be aware of the plagiarism, since the charge has been around for yrs. And everytime it comes up Heidi usually follows with vague and sometimes not so vague legal threats. Heidi is not on top of this since there was a death in her family and she is offline taking care of personal things(my condolences for that). I suspect when she is back on line she will hear about this and be livid and wanky. Should be interesting to see if she can contain the damage. I doubt she can now.